$568,106

11,124

What's MaKey MaKey?

MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It's a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything inbetween:

It comes ready to use out of the box with everything you see above: MaKey MaKey, Alligator Clips, USB Cable.

What Can I Make?

That's up to you! First, load up a computer program or any webpage (yes that's right, you're surfing the internet to invent).

Let's say you load up a piano. Then, instead of using the computer keyboard buttons to play the piano, you can hook up the MaKey MaKey to something fun, like bananas, and the bananasbecomeyour piano keys:

Or let's say you Google for an online "Pacman" game and draw a joystick with a pencil (yes, an actual ordinary pencil):

Then you can play Pacman by touching the drawing with your finger.

Or you could load up facebook or gmail and send a message on a custom-made alphabet soup keyboard:

How Does it Work?

Alligator Clip two objects to the MaKey MaKey board. For example, you and an apple.

When you touch the apple, you make a connection, and MaKey MaKey sends the computer a keyboard message. The computer just thinks MaKey MaKey is a regular keyboard (or mouse). Therefore it works with all programs and webpages, because all programs and webpages take keyboard and mouse input.

Any material that can conduct at least a tiny bit of electricity will work (if it doesn't already work, just rub it with bananas, spray it with water, or apply copper tape). Here are some materials people have used in our workshops including Ketchup, Pencil Graphite, Finger Paint, Lemons, etc.:

Other materials that work great: Plants, Coins, Your Grandma, Silverware, Anything that is Wet, Most Foods, Cats and Dogs, Aluminum Foil, Rain, and hundreds more...

Requirements?

MaKey MaKey works with any laptop or computer with a USB port and a recent operating system. How recent? We have tried it with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OSX.

We believe that everyone is creative, inventive, and imaginative. We believe that everyone can create the future and change the world. So we have dedicated our lives to making easy-to-use invention kits. We believe that the whole world is a construction kit, if we choose to see it that way.

We are inspired by the Maker Movement. We want to help people start to think of themselves as Makers and agents of change. When you have the "Maker's Mindset," you know you can change the world.

Why Are you Doing a Kickstarter?

If we raise $25,000 then we can do a large first run, which brings the retail cost down significantly, so that we can sell the kit to you for $35 (including shipping). We want this to be accessible to beginners, educators, artists, inventors, engineers, and anyone else regardless of income.

We are raising Kickstarter money to fund the first large run of MaKey MaKey kits. That is why most of the rewards are kits themselves. That's what we're spending the money on: manufacturing the kits.

Have You Prototyped This?

Everything in the video is real, running on either the first or the second prototype. Two years ago, we created the first prototype for MaKey MaKey, and ran a workshop at the San Francisco Exploratorium where people made "Drum Pants" and "Tweet Tea":

Then we built the second prototype from 2011 to 2012, and we tested it with professional interaction designers. It looks like this:

Our third prototype was just made, and will be tested at the Maker Faire and by 100 beta testers. It looks like this:

Now we are designing the kit a fourth time. This will be the kit you, our KickStarter supporters, will receive. It will look mostly like the third prototype, with some aesthetic modifications.

How Are You Manufacturing the Circuits for the Orders Placed on Kickstarter?

We are collaborating with the amazing team at Sparkfun. Sparkfun is the perfect choice for us because they make safe, environmentally responsible (RoHS compliant) circuit boards. They are located in the USA (in Boulder, CO), and they treat their employees fantastically. Workers are paid a generous wage with benefits, can bring their dogs to work, listen to music while they work, etc. That may sound like it should be "normal", but in the world of circuit production it is very rare and there are lots of sad working conditions elsewhere. Also, Sparkfun is the world's largest manufacturer of Open Source Hardware, which is critical to MaKey MaKey, an all Open Source Hardware project.

We worked closely with Jim Lindblom and others from the Sparkfun team to get the board ready for manufacturing. We’re grateful to have them as our partners in this project. With their help we will be done manufacturing and shipping by the end of August. They have a lot of experience meeting deadlines.

What Does the Back of the Board Look Like?

The back of the board has hookups for 6 keyboard keys, and mouse control. It also has the open hardware logo, a link for help getting started, and an area for using the board in Arduino mode.

Wait... Is this thing an Arduino?

You could say this board is 2 for the price of 1. MaKey MaKey runs on top of Arduino. You can start using your MaKey MaKey board in "Arduino mode" at any time. This would allow you to spin motors, turn on LEDs, or anything else that an Arduino can do. If you want to learn to use Arduino or other electronics, but want to start without any programming or breadboarding, MaKey MaKey is a good starting point. There's no need to understand Arduino in order to use MaKey MaKey.

Seriously, I Am a Geek, Tell Me All the Krazy Tech Stuff

MaKey MaKey is a printed circuit board with an ATMega32u4 microcontroller running Arduino Leonardo bootloader. It uses the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol to communicate with your computer, and it can send keypresses, mouse clicks, and mouse movements. For sensing closed switches on the digital input pins, we use high resistance switching to make it so you can close a switch even through materials like your skin, leaves, and play-doh. We use a pull-up resistor of 10-50 mega ohms. This technique attracts noise on the input, so we use a moving window averager to lowpass the noise in software, saving money on hardware filtering. There are six inputs on the front of the board, which can be attached to via alligator clipping, soldering to the pads, or any other method you can think of. There are another 12 inputs on the back, 6 for keyboard keys, and 6 for mouse motion, which you can access with jumpers via the female headers. If you wish to use a different set of keys, or otherwise change the behavior of your MaKey MaKey, you can simply reprogram it using the Arduino environment. By cutting a trace on the back of the board, you can disconnect the large pull-up resistors if you want to, which would be necessary in a small minority of Arduino-style projects. Have more geeky questions? Post them in the comments and we'll answer them.

OMG This Is Awesome Where Can I Find Out More?

MaKey MaKey was at Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 19th and May 20th. There were MaKey MaKey giveaways at Maker Faire for teachers, maker space organizers, etc. (limited supplies)

Kickstarter is not a store.

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DELUXE KIT - One Full Kit, plus the following: A 50 ft. roll of conductive tape, a pack of jumper wires (to plug into the back of the MaKey MaKey), and an extra pack of alligator clips. (Add $15 for international shipping)